All perfect things are saddening in effect.

The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes,

The matchless tinting on the royal rose

Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked.

Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked

Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows,

These hold a deeper pathos than our woes,

Since they leave nothing better to expect.

When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through,

And all too narrow for the broadening soul,

Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,

Fair, beautiful and whole!

I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,

And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;

I shall believe the heights for which I strive

Are only reached by anguish and by pain;

And though I groan and tremble with my crosses,

I yet shall see, through my severest losses,

The greater gain.

Distrust that man who tells you to distrust;

He takes the measure of his own small soul,

And thinks the world no larger.

Trust in thine own untried capacity

As thou wouldst trust in God himself. Thy soul

Is but an emanation from the whole.

Thou dost not dream what forces lie in thee,

Vast and unfathomed as the grandest sea.

It seemeth such a little way to me

Across to that strange country -- the Beyond;

And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be

The home of those of whom I am so fond,

They make it seem familiar and most dear,

As journeying friends bring distant regions near.

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Protest", Poems of Problems

'Tis easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong;
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
But the smile that is worth the praise of earth
Is the smile that comes through tears.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Worth While"

Gardens. The word is overcharged with meaning;
It speaks of moonlight and a closing door;
Of birds at dawn--of sultry afternoons.
Gardens. I seem to see low branches screening
A vine-roofed arbor with a leaf-tiled floor
Where sunlight swoons.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "Stairways and Gardens", World Voices

A weed is but an unloved flower.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, "The Weed", New Thought Pastels

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